


Pick Up the Pieces And Go On

by LtLJ



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, all our friends are dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 03:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14535942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LtLJ/pseuds/LtLJ
Summary: Tony and Nebula, on Titan, after the end.





	Pick Up the Pieces And Go On

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for The Avengers: Infinity War

"We can't stay here," Nebula said. 

"Right." Tony shoved himself to his feet. The air was cool on his skin, on the tear in his suit where Thanos had stabbed him. "I have to get back to Earth." 

"Earth?" Nebula's voice was deep and rough. "Where Thanos found the last Infinity Stone?"

"It's the only place where I can get help. There's got to be..." Somebody left. Tony winced away from the thought. One thing at a time. If he thought about what was actually happening, he wouldn't be able to do anything. He would lie down in the dust that was left of their dead companions and never move again. 

Nebula nodded. "We'll take the Guardians' ship." 

"The Guardians?" Tony squinted at her. He noticed the "we." They were sticking together? Yeah, they were sticking together. It made sense. It should be a relief to not be alone on an alien planet, but he couldn't feel anything right now.

"That's what they called themselves." Nebula looked down at the dust around their feet, her mouth twisting into something that might be pain, or might be or contempt. "This way."

She started over the rocks toward the wrecked ships that towered over the rocky plain. Tony followed her. They were both moving slowly over the uncertain footing. Tony felt like he was floating a couple of feet above his body and tried to hold on to that sensation. He didn't want to go back down there where all the pain was.

The surroundings helped. The reddish spires of rock, wind-twisted into alien shapes, the huge metal wheels of the wrecked ships looming over them. It was surreal, unreal, and he could think about that instead of the wind-blow dust.

Nebula was frowning, but possibly that was just how her face looked. She said, "Two of them weren't here."

It took him a moment to catch up. Right, two of the Guardians hadn't been here. "Mantis said two of your people went with Thor." Which would have been good intel to have, to figure out where the others were, if they didn't already know that whatever Thor had been trying to do to stop Thanos had failed.

If there were any others left. Pepper, Rhodey, Bruce-- He swallowed, his throat raw, and forced the thought away. One foot in front of the other. Just keep going.

"They weren't my people." Her voice went harsh, then she caught her breath, and her mouth did the thing which Tony now realized was her trying very hard to suppress any hint of emotion. "They were my sister's-- My sister's people."

The sister Thanos had murdered in some bizarre test of "worth" to get the Soulstone. Fuck the sick bastard who came up with that. "Quill was her husband?"

Nebula grimaced and made a gesture that seemed the equivalent of a shrug. "I don't-- I don't know what they--"

"Yeah, no, I get you. Relatives, who knows."

She said, "The boy...was your son?" She spoke slowly, like she was feeling her way, like someone not used to having fraught conversations. Or any conversations.

"No." Tony felt that sense of looking down at the top of his own head. There was a psychological term for that, but he couldn't remember what it was. Possibly it was stored in the part of his brain where the emotions were, and he couldn't go in there right now to look for it. "But sort of," he heard himself add. "He was, um, like a student."

They walked in silence for a while, then she said, "You think the wizard was right?"

"Yes," Tony said. Because there was no other choice, no other way to go on.

 

***

 

They reached the ship, hidden behind an outcrop, and after some banging and punching at the codelock, Nebula got the hatch open.

It was dim and a little cramped and homey inside, and unlike Thanos' ship, it was geared toward human-like people. Tony told Nebula, "I need to see the navigation, star maps. Figure out where we are in relation to Earth." She nodded, looking around grimly. He realized she hadn't said anything about her home planet and added, "Is there anybody you need to check on?"

It took her a moment to understand what he meant. "No one." She squeezed her eyes shut. "Only my sister."

Tony wasn't sure what did it, if her struggle to suppress her rage and pain somehow broke the wall that was holding him together. His body flushed cold and then hot and nausea cramped his stomach. His legs gave out and he sat down hard.

When the world steadied, Tony realized Nebula was standing over him, holding something that looked like a thermos bottle in his face. He stared up at her.

She said, "It's stev." When he didn't react, she added, "It's a stimulant. To drink." Tony was still staring at her. She added again, "Quill drinks it, it should be safe for your species." When he still didn't react, she lifted the bottle, took a drink, and then held it out to him again.

Tony finally got that she was trying to offer him something to drink. "Oh, god, sorry." He pressed his hands to his eyes. They were gritty and burning. "I wasn't implying you were trying to poison me, or--" He looked up at her and took the bottle. "There's a thing humans -- my species -- has, where in response to trauma, mental, physical trauma--" _Parker,_ he thought, and his whole body shuddered. "--we go into shock."

"Shock," Nebula repeated, eyeing him. "How is it cured?"

"Uh, I should really know that." Tony's mind was blank. All he had was an image of the first time aliens had attacked New York, and the ambulances everywhere. "It involves a foil blanket."

"Foil blanket," Nebula muttered, and went away.

Tony remembered the bottle in his hand and took a cautious sip. It tasted a little like strong tea, with a savory undertone, and it cut through the rawness in his throat. He knocked back the rest of the bottle.

His legs stopped trembling and he pushed to his feet. 

Nebula came back through the hatch carrying a green-gray bundle. She pushed it into Tony's arms. It was a silky blanket, and it smelled like some kind of flower. Not roses or anything obvious. Something white and found in meadows. Tony said, "This smells nice."

Nebula had another blanket bundled around her shoulders. She said, "There's no foil onboard. These are from my sister's bunk," and for a moment her gaze was bleak and heartbroken and lost, like looking into an empty abyss, like looking into a mirror.

_You can't collapse on the blue robot woman who just lost her sister,_ Tony thought, _get your shit together, Stark._ He said, "We need to get out of here."

Nebula had her expression back under control again, a comforting neutral. "This way."

 

***

 

Finding Earth turned out to be harder than anticipated since the Guardian's ship didn't have star maps of that part of the galaxy. Nebula took a quick trip over to the wreck of Thanos' ship to pull data from its navigation system, and Tony used the time to start some repairs to his armor. If he had been able to fly them both over to the wreck, they could have gotten off this godforsaken hellplanet much faster. With the stev and the food Nebula had pointed out in the galley, he was getting better at maintaining a level of numb but enraged that he could work with.

Once she got back and loaded the data, they got the course plotted and they were finally able to lift off from the planet.

She was in the first elevated control chair in the cockpit area, and Tony climbed into the second, trying to ignore the crumbs that said that this had been the favorite seat of someone who had just died. He settled into the cracked, comfortable padding, blanket still wrapped around his shoulders. Nebula was still wearing hers, too. He watched her at the controls, picking up what he needed to know to spell her, then abruptly fell asleep before he could offer to take over.

He popped awake, gripping the chair's arms, and Nebula said, "You screamed."

"Huh?" Tony stared at her. He couldn't remember the nightmare. If he was lucky, he was still having it, and would wake up and wonder what the fuck was wrong with his imagination. He didn't think he was that lucky.

She clarified, "In your sleep. You screamed."

Tony sighed and rubbed his face, his brain finally lurching into gear. "Yeah, well, I was probably overdue for a good scream."

Nebula grunted in agreement.

Tony climbed out of the seat, grimacing as the movement pulled at his cauterized wound. He wasn't sure he had felt it before, if he had been so numb his mind had filtered it out with all the other pain, but he could feel every bruise and scrape now. He went back to the living quarters, found the bathroom which fortunately was mostly self-explanatory, then went to the galley.

Now that he was aware enough to notice it, the scattered debris of the lives of the people who had evidently lived in this ship was everywhere. There was a disproportionate amount of toys. God, had they been raising a kid? It was all too possible. They had obviously been living here; this ship was more of an armed Winnebago than it was a military vessel. He thought suddenly of all the survivors who were going to die anyway because their parents, caregivers, doctors, teachers, whatever had dissolved into dust.

He didn't want to know if there'd been a kid.

He found the galley and a large bowl, and put together a selection of food, some of the fresh fruit, some different colored blocks and cubes that smelled meat-like, and some packages with writing he couldn't read but from the pictures were clearly processed food items. He added two more bottles of the stev and a couple of similar containers of plain water. He carried it up to the cockpit and put the bowl on the stand next to Nebula's control chair.

"Break time," he told her, climbing back into his chair. "This is a union shop. Eat and get some sleep, I'll take over." 

Nebula frowned down at the bowl like no one had ever brought her lunch before. She hesitated for a long moment, but then transferred control and picked up a water and piece of purple fruit. Tony had calculated that it would take about thirty hours to reach Earth, not nearly long enough for them to stress-eat their way through the ship's stores. The blanket still smelled like flowers.

Crunching on something from one of the packages, Nebula said, "Do you have music?"

"Music?" Maybe that meant something else. He wasn't sure how well these translator things were working.

"Quill had music. It was terrible but--" She shrugged, and opened another food package.

Tony activated the armor just enough to form a ring around his collarbone, and accessed its data storage and audio. Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" blasted through the cockpit.

Nebula listened, her head cocked, then nodded. "Now that I like."


End file.
